Day 8-12

* After thorough planning and preparations we were ready for the final part: The Expedtion to Mount Whatchamacallit. Western.. TV Series.. a yes: Bonanza Peak.

• To get there we had to go into the middle of nowhere to take a ferry to, well, nowhere. From there a shuttle bus took us to a lutheran church camp, called “Holden Village”

Bow down in awe of Justin's Mountain Guide muscle.

Even the animals gawk at mountain climbers here.

• From the Village we had to get to Holden Pass. A pretty tough walk. Especially Chris and I, with our consecutive courses, where hurting but the others didn't do to much better. (Except for Justin probably, did you see those muscles?)

• On day nine we made our attempt on Bonanza Peak. This might be a good time to tell you that the people in Holden where like “yeah, we've seen climbers here before (like once or twice a year), but never this early in the season. Well.. we did our best.

• But we had started out pretty late (6ish), the snow was just gruesome, we had to make detours to go around avalanchy looking areas. In short we weren't making the speed we expected and were loosing a lot of energy on the approach already.

• In the end we turned around because even at 1100 there was still no mountain to see and we weren't into climbing rock with 30ft visibility.

Bonanza Peak is to the left of this picture. Not that it would make any difference.

• Nobody was really into trying again and so the next day the weather was great. Clear victory for murphy's law. We had fun doing skills like multi-pitch steep snow and advanced glacier travel.

Isn't snow lovely?

• And that was it for amtl part two. We did some more rock climbing on the last day and then I had to go back to germany.